Seven years on, and their absence has expanded. Just as our life would have in this time, it has swelled. So this is a new sadness, I think. For I want them as they would be now. I want to be in our life. Seven years on, it is distilled, my loss. For I am not whirling anymore, I am no longer cradled by shock.
And I fear. Is this truth now too potent for me to hold? If I keep it close, will I tumble? At times I don’t know.
But I have learned that I can only recover myself when I keep them near. If I distance myself from them, and their absence, I am fractured. I am left feeling I’ve blundered into a stranger’s life.
I am also split off from myself when I don’t reveal. It’s like I’m in a witness protection scheme, I’ve often thought of my life in New York. I needed this, a cover-up, when I was stunned. But it is different now. I suspect that I can only stay steady as I traverse this world that’s empty of my family when I admit the reality of them, and me.
For I am without them, as much as I am on my own.
And when I hold back this truth, I am cut loose, adrift, hazy about my identity. Who am I now?
There was a thunderstorm last night, so this garden is perky, and my bench is wet. I see damp mornings on our lawn in London, Malli picking a dandelion, sticking it in my hair.
And now I remember. How Malli would describe and define me. And how I’d protest.
“We are three boys and one girl, three boys and one girl,” he’d say, explaining his family, working out our composition as he hopped across the paving stones on the patio. Then he’d recite our names, even referring to himself as Nikhil, his given name, and not Malli, as he was always called. “Stephen Lissenburgh, Vikram Lissenburgh, Nikhil Lissenburgh, and Mummy Lissenburgh.” He’d announce us with aplomb.
Mummy Lissenburgh? I’d roar in exaggerated objection. My new credentials. Me having no identity without these three boys to whom I was merely tagged on. “Malli, why do you get both my names wrong? You got everyone else’s right. That’s not me.”
Steve enjoyed our son’s account of me, of course. He egged him on. “Clever boy, Mal, spot on, you’re exactly right. You tell it like it is.” So “Mummy Lissenburgh!” Malli would chant. And the three silly boys would fall about laughing. Now I sit in this garden in New York, and I hear them, jubilant, gleeful, on our lawn.
Acknowledgments
Thank you most of all to Mark Epstein, my extraordinary therapist. This book would not exist without his guidance and persuasion. With him I was safe, to try to grasp the unfathomable, and to dare to remember.
A huge thank-you to Radhika Coomaraswamy, Sarah Gordon, Malathi de Alwis, and Amrita Pieris, who read every fragment of this book, and kept insisting on more, through the years.
Many thanks to Swyrie and Ken Balendra, Beverley Wood, Naomi Collett, Anita Grigoriadis, Margaret Headland, Natasha Balendra, Ruvanthi Sivapragasam, Carole Burgher, Kevin Brown, Lester Hudson, Maria Hudson, Sithie Tiruchelvam, David Brown, Keshini Soysa, Linda Spalding, Suki Sandler, and Sophie Wood, who responded to the book and encouraged me at various stages of writing.
My profound thanks to Michael Ondaatje, whose support has meant so much to me.
I am truly grateful to my agent, Ellen Levine. Many thanks to Lennie Goodings.
Many thanks to Carol Devine Carson, Pei Loi Koay, and Gabrielle Brooks at Knopf, and to Kendra Ward and Scott Richardson at McClelland and Stewart.
A very special thank-you to Sonny Mehta and Diana Coglianese in New York, and to Ellen Seligman, in Toronto. I am so moved by all they have done to bring this book into the world. Their care and dedication as my publishers and editors have been phenomenal, and it’s been such a treat to work with them.
A Note About the Author
Sonali Deraniyagala has an undergraduate degree in economics from Cambridge University and a doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford. She is on the faculty of the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and is a research scholar at Columbia University.
For more information, please visit www.aaknopf.com